Gladly would the Nonjurors have wrought out a method of parochial discipline which would have kept in order not merely such religionists as agreed in their views, but the population at large, reducing everybody to a Procrustean bed of belief and practice. No Presbyterians under the Commonwealth could have been more rigorous apostles of uniformity than the Nonjurors would have proved, had they but obtained permission to do as they pleased. They would have gone beyond their predecessors; for though Milton says presbyter is priest writ large, a mere presbyter has not the same element of despotic force at his command as is possessed by the genuine priest. The priest, as a steward of mystical sacraments, becomes more potent than preacher or pastor. He is constituted lord of a domain beyond the borders of reason and moral authority; he carries keys which open and shut what the superstitious imagine to be gates of heaven. The Nonjurors were priests, not with limitations, like some of their episcopalian brethren, but out and out. Their ministers offered sacrifice upon an altar, they did not merely commemorate one at the Lord’s-table. Laymen imbibed their views—they were maintained by Robert Nelson.[483]
1694–1702.
As to modes of worship, the Nonjurors were in circumstances which precluded ritualistic magnificence. They were proscribed, as Nonconformist confessors had been, and therefore were forced to serve God in obscurity. Cathedrals and churches were closed against them—they were driven into barns and garrets. Pomp, such as is now so fashionable, was to them an impossibility; not that I find them manifesting any cravings in that direction. They did not follow Archbishop Laud. High sacramental views are by no means necessarily connected with Ritualism. Ritualism may be purely æsthetical, and quite separate from peculiar doctrinal opinions; at the same time a belief in the Real presence and in the Sacrifice of the Lord’s Supper may wear an outward form not more artistic than that which obtains in a Dissenting meeting-house.[484]
NONJURORS.
With all the political and ecclesiastical passions of that age, there existed comparatively little of what may be properly called religious excitement. The principal amount of religious excitement in the reign of William III. must not be sought in the Established Church, or amongst Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists. It must be divided between Nonjurors and Quakers. Dismissing the latter for the present, it may be said that the former exhibited abundant enthusiasm. Hickes was as much a spiritual fanatic as any of the Presbyterian army chaplains, or any of Cromwell’s troopers. Some who reviled the madness of the sects during the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, were as mad themselves after the Revolution. Of that kind of devout fervour, which though not healthy is free from worldliness, and which draws its main inspirations from the world to come, Kettlewell is a fair example. In intensity of religious feelings, he resembled a staunch Methodist of the eighteenth century.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The last ten years of the seventeenth century witnessed the consolidation of Dissent. Growing in confidence, Dissenters made bolder ventures. If some old congregations melted away in villages, where an ejected clergyman had worn out his days, or where the original supporters had died without bequeathing their opinions, together with their property, new congregations were formed in towns, where population gave scope for activity, and social freedom aided religious effort. Preachers with a roving commission settled down into local pastors, and a spirit of enterprise appeared in building places of worship. Nonconformists had for some time amidst hindrance and irritation been digging again the wells of their fathers, stopped by the Philistines; but the days of strife were so far over that they could say: “Now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land;” yet such names as Rehoboth and Beersheba, so often ridiculed, were not used by them as by some of their descendants of later date.
NONCONFORMISTS.
As to the erection of religious edifices in London, it may be mentioned that about the era of the Revolution one was erected in Zoar Street, another in Gravel Lane, and a third in Hare Court.[485] The neglected Halls of City Companies had become available for Dissenting worship, and by economical alterations were transformed into houses of prayer. Turners’ Hall fell into the hands of the General Baptists about the year 1688; soon afterwards the Presbyterians erected “a large substantial brick building of a square form, with four deep galleries, and capable of seating a considerable congregation.”[486] Chapels, as we should call them—but the name was not used by the early Nonconformists—arose in Fair Street, Southwark; in Meeting-house Court, Blackfriars; in the Old Barbican, beyond Aldersgate; and over the King’s Weigh-House, Little Eastcheap. At the end of the century, the Presbyterians provided a moderate-sized wooden building with one gallery in King John’s Court, in the parish of St. Mary Magdalen, Bermondsey. About the same period, the Independents provided a place of worship in Rosemary Lane; and soon afterwards a large and substantial edifice was built by Presbyterians in the Old Jewry, Aldgate. It is remarkable that, after the Act of Toleration had been passed some years, liberty seemed of so precarious a nature, that to enjoy it concealment was necessary. Private houses, therefore, were in this case erected between the meeting-house and the street, that the former might be screened from public view.[487]
Nonconformists in the provinces imitated Nonconformists in London. Bath, then at the head of English watering-places, though still a city much occupied by clothiers, had a congregation which before had been wont to meet in “a shear-shop,” but now dared to come into open day, and to build in Frog Lane, afterwards New Bond Street. In the pleasant neighbourhood of Shepton Mallet, people who had assembled in the green woods now erected chapels in the town and adjacent villages. The Warminster people raised a meeting-house at the cost of £487 2s. 7d., the sum being obtained partly by subscription and partly by the sale of pews and seats, which became the property of the purchasers, and were accordingly sold and bequeathed.[488]